Why are villains written like antiheroes these days.

[king81992]

Yeah, but usually for nonsensical reasons that downplay or sweep under the rug a lot of the terrible things she's done or her personality issues. It's why a lot of people don't buy into "hero Harley."

But usually her motivations are mostly self-preservation that just happen to coincide with helping the heroes.

Agree,showing up on a splash page with heroes is called a cameo, not proof of Harley being a hero.

'Hero Harley' could work if DC actually showed how her improving and putting in work to be better. As things are now, the only thing that changed about Harley is that she's no longer on Joker's payroll.

[Dred]

Agree,showing up on a splash page with heroes is called a cameo, not proof of Harley being a hero.

'Hero Harley' could work if DC actually showed how her improving and putting in work to be better. As things are now, the only thing that changed about Harley is that she's no longer on Joker's payroll.

"...the only thing that changed about Harley is that she's no longer on Joker's payroll."

This is preposterous. By no means is she the same character she was when she was Joker's sidekick.

She's constantly finding herself on the heroic side of things, all the time, and usually with good intentions and, at worst, wacky intentions. She's not a violent psychopath, or an accessory to one. She's been squeaky clean for years and her history of misdeeds has been glossed over short of a hard, Wally/Hal style retcon.

[Ra-El]

Netflix's Cowboy Bebop shows how bad trying to "humanize" a villain can go, their Vicious suck!

Honestly, I'm all in for some real villains, not bad guys, but actual evil motherf#ckers. Give me them eating babies, killing puppies and punching blind old ladies. Give me Punisher Max villains, give me Frank Castle throwing them into reinforced glass to see wich one breaks first.

[Frontier]

"...the only thing that changed about Harley is that she's no longer on Joker's payroll."

This is preposterous. By no means is she the same character she was when she was Joker's sidekick.

She's constantly finding herself on the heroic side of things, all the time, and usually with good intentions and, at worst, wacky intentions. She's not a violent psychopath, or an accessory to one. She's been squeaky clean for years and her history of misdeeds has been glossed over short of a hard, Wally/Hal style retcon.

I think it's a stretch to say with good intentions because usually it's just as a matter of chance and not because she's actively trying to be heroic, and she can still come off as a violent psychopath when the mood suits her. I wouldn't call her living "squeaky clean" either.

Of course it also probably depends what you're reading because consistency and Harley don't go together all that well.

[Dred]

Netflix's Cowboy Bebop shows how bad trying to "humanize" a villain can go, their Vicious suck!

Honestly, I'm all in for some real villains, not bad guys, but actual evil motherf#ckers. Give me them eating babies, killing puppies and punching blind old ladies. Give me Punisher Max villains, give me Frank Castle throwing them into reinforced glass to see wich one breaks first.

I mean, the point of Punisher Max is to make fun of how evil The Punisher is despite people acting like he's a hero, lol.

[marhawkman]

Netflix's Cowboy Bebop shows how bad trying to "humanize" a villain can go, their Vicious suck!

Honestly, I'm all in for some real villains, not bad guys, but actual evil motherf#ckers. Give me them eating babies, killing puppies and punching blind old ladies. Give me Punisher Max villains, give me Frank Castle throwing them into reinforced glass to see which one breaks first.

See... this is why I used that Lex Luthor example earlier...

that and people seem to not want to write people doing ANYTHING that's actually evil. One of the animated Lex Luthor versions(Superman: Doomsday ) was.. exceptionally evil. But the corporate sort of evil SoB and not the crazy serial killer kind.

Lex did several different KINDS of evil in that movie.

1: Illegal mining operation that unleashed Doomsday from the stasis pod he was contained in.
2: After Doomsday went rampant Lex decided to hide the evidence... and killed everyone but himself who knew... including his personal assistant Mercy Graves.
3: steals Superman's body after Doomsday fights him.
4: stores Superman in stasis while making a clone army.
5: tortures the one working clone he bothered to activate.
6: does experiments using the other clones.... who die.
7: tries to force his working clone to kill the original.

Then there's early on the REALLY evil thing, something... not the supervillain kind of evil. He's reading emails at his desk when Mercy is about to tell him about how Doomsday wrecked his illegal mine. then he makes a comment about how he now has a cure for some disease, but decides it's unprofitable to market a cure, and decides to not release it, and instead market a treatment using the research data he acquired that will instead of curing the disease delay it's effects indefinitely... as long as it's taken daily. Yeah.... THAT kind of evil. The sort people ponder IRL daily.

Kicking puppies is bottom tier, boring nonsense cartoonish evil. Now stuff like extortion rackets? that's better....

[The Cool Thatguy]

Netflix's Cowboy Bebop shows how bad trying to "humanize" a villain can go, their Vicious suck!

Honestly, I'm all in for some real villains, not bad guys, but actual evil motherf#ckers. Give me them eating babies, killing puppies and punching blind old ladies. Give me Punisher Max villains, give me Frank Castle throwing them into reinforced glass to see wich one breaks first.

Thus the minority has spoken

Castle villains are the most boring villains ever, and damn repetitive.

[Ascended]

Not reading all these pages, but....

I don't know if villains as a whole are getting written as anti-heroes, or if villains are just getting more development.

Everyone always mentions Harley with this kinda stuff. And since Future State, yeah she's been working with Bruce and fits the definition now. But before FS? She wasn't an "anti-hero." A anti-hero uses terrible methods to achieve positive change. Acting like a villain to do a hero's work. Harls wasn't trying to improve or save anything, other than her own situation and circumstances. She "protected" Coney Island not because she wanted to make it safe for babies, but because it was her turf and she refused to let anyone else run it, and any other crime boss that tried to take over inevitably also tried to remove and kill her. Nearly every person Harley went after was due to revenge or protecting what she had, there was nothing altruistic about it. On rare occasion Harley would do something that was legitimately nice and good....but that has been the case with her since the start. It doesn't make her an anti-hero. People have called her that ever since DC began to explore the survivor's journey through her, but making her more understandable does not make her any flavor of "heroic."

Same thing happened with Deathstroke. He got enough character development for readers to understand his perspective (and Wolfman tried to retcon him into less of a sleezebag) and people started calling him an anti-hero....even though, for the most part, he was still killing people for money and anything good he did, was done out of selfish motivation and his good acts were merely a unintended consequence.

And the same goes for most of the villains who DC has developed in recent years. Or so it seems to me. Johns did a lot of work developing Sinestro. Is that guy anything but a villain, just because his motivations have a little bit of emotional resonance in them now and he's not just some two dimensional mustache twirler? How about Captain Cold? He's a likeable guy, really. I'd have a beer with him, if I could guarantee my own safety. But that doesn't mean he's anything but a crook. Just because he tries not to kill people he doesn't have to, and tries to take care of his sister....that doesn't mean he's not a complete and utter bastard of a villain.

Black Adam has crossed the line into anti-herodom. Did that back with Johns' JSA, really. Arguably so has Ivy, though that depends on how you want to define "eco terrorist." Maybe Catwoman (I don't follow her enough to know). And I'm sure there's a few others. But for the most part? Villains like Lex, the Rogues, Zoom, Sinestro, Black Manta.....we've learn what makes them tick and why they're the way they are, and people say "anti-hero" but really all it is, is learning more about why these people are horrible, awful people. But just because mommy didn't hug them enough and we feel bad for them, doesn't mean they're not the worst kind of person.

Or maybe I'm wrong and more villains have crossed the line and are now saving the world because it's the right thing to do, and I just haven't noticed. But it feels to me like people have forgotten what an anti-hero is, or have let the fact that some of these villains are likeable people distort the fact that they're still villains.

[marhawkman]

Not reading all these pages, but....

I don't know if villains as a whole are getting written as anti-heroes, or if villains are just getting more development.

Everyone always mentions Harley with this kinda stuff. And since Future State, yeah she's been working with Bruce and fits the definition now. But before FS? She wasn't an "anti-hero." A anti-hero uses terrible methods to achieve positive change. Acting like a villain to do a hero's work. Harls wasn't trying to improve or save anything, other than her own situation and circumstances. She "protected" Coney Island not because she wanted to make it safe for babies, but because it was her turf and she refused to let anyone else run it, and any other crime boss that tried to take over inevitably also tried to remove and kill her. Nearly every person Harley went after was due to revenge or protecting what she had, there was nothing altruistic about it. On rare occasion Harley would do something that was legitimately nice and good....but that has been the case with her since the start. It doesn't make her an anti-hero. People have called her that ever since DC began to explore the survivor's journey through her, but making her more understandable does not make her any flavor of "heroic."

Same thing happened with Deathstroke. He got enough character development for readers to understand his perspective (and Wolfman tried to retcon him into less of a sleezebag) and people started calling him an anti-hero....even though, for the most part, he was still killing people for money and anything good he did, was done out of selfish motivation and his good acts were merely a unintended consequence.

And the same goes for most of the villains who DC has developed in recent years. Or so it seems to me. Johns did a lot of work developing Sinestro. Is that guy anything but a villain, just because his motivations have a little bit of emotional resonance in them now and he's not just some two dimensional mustache twirler? How about Captain Cold? He's a likeable guy, really. I'd have a beer with him, if I could guarantee my own safety. But that doesn't mean he's anything but a crook. Just because he tries not to kill people he doesn't have to, and tries to take care of his sister....that doesn't mean he's not a complete and utter bastard of a villain.

Black Adam has crossed the line into anti-herodom. Did that back with Johns' JSA, really. Arguably so has Ivy, though that depends on how you want to define "eco terrorist." Maybe Catwoman (I don't follow her enough to know). And I'm sure there's a few others. But for the most part? Villains like Lex, the Rogues, Zoom, Sinestro, Black Manta.....we've learn what makes them tick and why they're the way they are, and people say "anti-hero" but really all it is, is learning more about why these people are horrible, awful people. But just because mommy didn't hug them enough and we feel bad for them, doesn't mean they're not the worst kind of person.

Or maybe I'm wrong and more villains have crossed the line and are now saving the world because it's the right thing to do, and I just haven't noticed. But it feels to me like people have forgotten what an anti-hero is, or have let the fact that some of these villains are likeable people distort the fact that they're still villains.

It's like with Atrocitus. his rage is actually based in righteous indignation. But he doesn't direct it at those who wronged him. He lashes out at anyone who even gets near him at times. Also.... Atrocitus killed the few people(the rest of the Inversions) who actually understood his rage and used their remains to create the first Red Lantern. Sure, he also knows things man was not meant to know as a result, and thus made Red Lantern rings do weird ****. He had understandable reasons... but he murdered thousands and didn't really need to.

[Agent Z]

Netflix's Cowboy Bebop shows how bad trying to "humanize" a villain can go, their Vicious suck!

Honestly, I'm all in for some real villains, not bad guys, but actual evil motherf#ckers. Give me them eating babies, killing puppies and punching blind old ladies. Give me Punisher Max villains, give me Frank Castle throwing them into reinforced glass to see wich one breaks first.

That's exactly what Vicious is like in the Netflix show.

[Frontier]

Thus the minority has spoken

Castle villains are the most boring villains ever, and damn repetitive.

It's all in the execution.

[The True Detective]

Evil for evil's sake is boring.
It's the old, 'nobody sees themselves as the villain of their own story'.

Once you start writing the villain long enough, their backstory and motivations can easily start coming across as a more sympathetic character.
Hell, if you're doing it right, readers SHOULD be able to see their point of view and think maybe they DO have a valid point/reason for their actions.
It's something I think MARVEL did particularly well.
Punisher - AWFUL human being, but knowing WHY he's the way he is opens that door so you think, "well I understand his anger and motivation".
Magneto is another brilliant example, Lizard, Morbius - hell almost half of the Spider-Man rogues gallery!!

But it's ok to show that just like irl some people are just plain evil and there is no humanity to them. I've never read a Joker, Darkseid, Carnage or Red Skull story and thought "hmm maybe they have a point" or related to them on any level nor do I ever want to. Just like some heroes are unwavering in their goodness it's important to have villains who are just pure vile filth.

It's 1 thing for the likes of Magneto or Flash's Rogues to be morally ambiguous and grey but Joker and Darkseid should never flirt with being anti-heroes. The whole point of characters like that is they're the worst of the worst, truly irredeemable monsters.

[Ra-El]

That's exactly what Vicious is like in the Netflix show.

In the anime too, the difference is that in the anime he is a mysterious, cold man we know almost nothing about. He is just evil, have a rivalry with Spike that may or may not be tied to Julia. In the show he is a emotional mess with daddy issues and childhood traumas.

[The Cool Thatguy]

It's all in the execution.

And Punisher villains are like knock knock jokes.

Even if you've never heard it before, you know the basics

[Ra-El]

And Punisher villains are like knock knock jokes.

Even if you've never heard it before, you know the basics

But there's any "original" villain, one we don't know the basics? They are just evil, or have parents issues, or think they are doing the right thing, or have a noble cause but are misguied, or some combination of it.

In Garth Ennis Punisher MAX the villains have simple archetypes, the sex-slavers, the old psycopath soldiers, etc. What I really like in what Ennis did, is even when he give us some sad backstory to his villains, he don't try to make us feel sympathy for them. They are evil people, doing disgusting things and when Frank brutally murders them, we feel good about it.